The Impractical Garden
by esplanade
Summary: "He only ever referred to it as an experiment, and it was true that he seemed to treat the gardens with a scientific detachment rather than anything resembling proper care. He would often let plants go without water just to see how long they could survive; others he would drown. There were some that he cared for with devotion, but which plants received this care changed mostly with


It wasn't that John didn't adore London, quite the contrary in fact, but it was loud and full of people, and his efforts to exist in it without suffering bouts of panic since returning from Afghanistan had proven fruitless. Every car horn made him jump, and every innocent bystander who bumped into him was briefly an enemy before he remembered there were no enemies except himself anymore.

It only took him a few weeks to find a job outside the city, in a small town tucked neatly into the countryside called Bell Song. It would be quiet, mundane, and peaceful. It was for the best.

While the town was beautiful in its way, something about it was suspended in a state of gloom, no doubt perpetuated by the gray, sulky English skies that rarely even broke into sun during the warmest summer months.

John was awake most nights. But it wasn't as bad in his little cottage as it had been in London. When he woke up, he knew there was no one around who would bother him, or worse, come to check on him and offer their concern. He was able to slowly reorient himself, to quietly make some tea and rest on his sofa. He'd considered living in the heart of town, but in the end, he'd decided that the cottage would give him just enough isolation to keep him sane.

For the first time in moths, he felt like he could breathe.

... ... ...

One day soon after arriving, John called for a cab to take him back home from across town – no way he could walk that far with the ache in his leg – and the driver, a large jovial man, insisted on giving him a ride around the city, free of charge. New residents were so rare that the locals had been discussing John's arrival since they first laid eyes on him, the man told him. John smiled, accepting the impromptu tour, but was too distracted to listen to much of what the man was saying. He sat back in his seat, staring out at the scenery and trying to relax.

The driver pointed out good restaurants and shops, highlighting his favorites, telling him all the points of interest that small towns like Bell Song always have.

They drove past an estate with a large country house situated at the top of one of the hills. It was gray and bleak washed out stone, with no lights visible in any of the windows. But the house had extensive gardens, some open, some behind fences and low walls, some in greenhouses. And they seemed almost wild.

"What is that?"

The driver met his eyes in the mirror. "That place? That's the Holmes estate. Been there for well over a hundred years."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. Grew up in its shadow like everyone else here did."

"The gardens are amazing."

"Yeah, and I hear there's no gardener, either."

"Must be very time consuming."

"They're old money, Dr. Watson. All they have is time."

"Who all lives there?"

"All that's left of the family is the two brothers. The parents died years ago. Only one of the brothers is there all the time. I think the other does government work."

John craned his neck around, catching one last glimpse of the house before it fell out of sight.

"Government work?"

"Yeah, Mycroft, the older one. He's never around much anymore, except on holidays, which coincidentally is the only time of year his younger brother _isn't_ there."

"His younger brother?"

He nodded. "Sherlock. He does the gardens.."

"He does all that by himself?"

"Yeah. Most kids here spend their lives trying to sneak in," he said with a smirk. "Very few are successful."

"I'd love to meet them. I feel like I've met nearly everyone else in town."

"Yeah, well, good luck."

"Why do you say that?"

"The Holmes boys aren't known for their hospitality."

... ... ...

The driver's word of warning didn't keep John away for long. It was less than a week before his curiosity got the best of him.

The walk was a long and difficult one, but his leg seemed to hurt a little less than it had.

He was just raising his hand to lift the door knocker when the door swung open. John took a startled step back and glanced up at the tall, wiry looking man in front of him. He'd clearly been on his way out, his coat on and an umbrella hooked over his arm. He looked down at John with an amused quirk of his mouth.

"Hello, Dr. Watson."

"You...you know who I am?"

"Of course," he replied without any further explanation as he checked the time. "Though I'm afraid I can't stay. Business calls." There were scars striped across the back of his hand, skin puckered in multiple places. It was unlike any scar pattern John had ever seen. "Mrs. Hudson will take care of whatever you need," he said, still glancing at his watch. Almost as an afterthought he added, "Welcome to Bell Song, Dr. Watson." He gave a flick of the wrist and strode off to an expensive black car, which drove him down the gravel with a rumbling crunch.

John stood at the open door, watching after him for a moment longer before he stepped inside, pushing the door shut behind him. The front hall was a dark wood, and in a nearby room John could hear the echoing tick of a large clock. He was about to set off down the hall when he heard a second sound, a lighter click, and a little old woman materialized around the corner.

"I'm Mrs. Hudson, dear, the housekeeper. What can I do for you?"

"I'm John Watson. I just moved here. I was just dropping by to meet..."

"Oh, you must have just run into Mycroft. I'm afraid he's always on the move."

"Yeah, he's a bit..."

"Abrupt?"

"Sure that's one way to put it."

"I think Sherlock is around here somewhere. I can go get him, if you'd like, though I can't promise he'll be especially neighborly."

"That would be great, thanks."

"Of course, dear. Just a minute." She gave him a sweet smile and set off down one of the hallways.

In the quiet that followed the disappearance of her clicking steps, John suddenly felt very out of place, like a child who had been caught in his parents' room when he wasn't supposed to go there. He began wondering if he had made the right decision in coming to meet the Holmes brothers, or if he should have just left them to their reputation as the locals did.

He took a few steps deeper into the house, aimlessly wandering into the front parlor, searching for a seat in response to the ache in his leg. The parlor was a long room with filmy curtains and various expensive knick knacks balanced on any flat surface that would hold them. There was a grand piano, mostly unused, and a violin case lying on its bench. On top of the piano sat a single flower, a lily made of porcelain. It looked to be the most breakable, and also the least costly item in the room, yet it held a place of honor.

"Afghanistan, correct?"

John whirled around to face the man walking toward him. Tall, elegant, and dark-haired, and holding a pair of black gloves in his hand as if he'd just removed them.

"Yeah, how'd you know?" The man just shook his head, a small smile on his face. "I'm John Watson. I just moved here."

"I know."

"You must be Sherlock Holmes."

"Yes."

"It's great to meet you." John held out a hand, and the man stared at it for quite a while as if it was a foreign gesture. Finally, he tugged the gloves on, and only then did he shake John's hand. John thought it odd, but mentally classified the man as a germaphobe and thought little else of it. "I couldn't help but notice your gardens when I was driving by the other day."

Sherlock released his hand and said, "One must find something to do with one's time." He turned and began to walk back to the hall, and without a second thought, John followed him. "Otherwise I'd be terribly bored."

"You do all that because you're bored?" John let himself be led through the labyrinthine rooms of the house, trying to take in as much as possible. There were paintings all over the walls, many of them of gardens and landscapes, and despite everything being immaculately clean, the furniture gave the impression that its natural state was covered in a thin layer of dust and decay. They passed rooms with doors tightly shut, and others left open, revealing all manners of things, including multiple chemistry sets. Even the kitchen at the back of the house had chemistry equipment on its table, burn marks in the wood, and pieces of unidentifiable greenery littering the surface.

Sherlock threw open the kitchen door and set off into the back section of the estate. John paused in the doorway, looking at the land laid out in front of him that had not been visible from the road. The grass was overgrown in many places, completely missing in others. Some sections were overrun by English ivy and creeping thyme, choking out even the weeds that attempted to grow near them. John stepped carefully outside to follow Sherlock, turning as he walked through the vegetation to look back at the house behind him. The gray stone was broken up by purple, wisteria climbing up as far as it could. John stumbled walking backwards looking at it, and feeling rather like he had been dropped in a jungle, turned to catch up with Sherlock. He carefully dodged a menacing looking shrub covered in thorns that was beginning to push its way onto what passed for a path.

Far off on the other side of the estate, John saw a single tree standing by itself. It was covered in hanging bundles of flowers similar in shape to the wisteria, but colored a strong, bright yellow that stood out in sharp contrast to the gray gloom of the countryside. The tree was so heavy with these golden tendrils of flowers that John thought it was a wonder the thing's branches hadn't snapped under the weight.

"A golden chain tree." Sherlock's voice startled him. He had stopped walking and was staring off at the tree as well. "Usually seen in southern Europe. A lovely poisonous tree, though it's often used as an ornamental. Why people believe that using poisonous trees for such a purpose has never ceased to baffle me." He waved for John to follow, and left the nearly nonexistent path to cross the yard, approaching a large, rundown greenhouse. It was an ornate building with a high ceiling, the top of it decorated with iron work made to look like vines. Several panes of glass were missing throughout, the intact glass a bluish green underneath a blurry accumulation of dirt and grime. The weeds were beginning to encroach upon it as well, and the door was long since gone. Sherlock strode through the empty doorway into the greenhouse.

The greenhouse was filled with inexplicable bursts of color. There was even a shrub that had grown through some smashed panes of glass and now dominated a corner of the building. It was covered in vibrant, tropical-looking pink flowers. There were similar shrubs in the other corners, in varying shades of pink, red, and yellow, and even one that had perfect white flowers. Some pieces of the shrubs had been cut and were left on one of the tables in a spread, some of the petals having fallen to the ground, crushed and dirty.

All over were the columns of foxglove flowers, growing up from the most unlikely places, some in pots that were otherwise choked by dead vines. Creeper plants covered much of the ground in the greenhouse, and John saw one section covered entirely in Queen Anne's lace that was waiting for the creeper to take them over too. If a plant could possibly cower, John believed that was what he was seeing.

Sherlock stopped at the table of bright cut flowers and took off his gloves, shoving them into his pocket before brushing the flowers to the side of the table.

John glanced down beside him at some purple flowers that were trying to survive. Sections of them were wilting and dying, turning brown and crisp, losing vibrancy. But some were still doggedly pursuing life, the clusters of blossoms determined to keep their color. John reached out to touch them, to see if they had a scent, when he heard Sherlock say sharply, "_Stop_."

He looked up, his hand halfway to the flowers, waiting for explanation. Sherlock's hand was outstretched toward him in a warning. "Poisonous," he said.

"What, these purple ones are?"

"Lilac."

"Isn't lilac a type of purple?"

"No, the flowers. They're lilacs."

"I didn't think lilacs were poisonous," John said. He withdrew his hand. "I mean, don't people plant them in their gardens all the time?"

"Every flower in this greenhouse is poisonous." He gave a dismissive wave of his hand as he approached one of the corner shrubs, reaching out to admire the pristine white flowers.

"Should you be touching them, then?"

Sherlock glanced over at him with a look that bordered on condescending. "You don't believe me?"

"Maybe about the foxglove."

"Oh, you recognize that flower, then."

"Yeah, a very popular set of cardiac drugs is derived from it. There is a very narrow difference between what can treat your heart failure and what can kill you. But do I believe Queen Anne's lace is suddenly the world's greatest poison? No."

Sherlock watched him for a moment with an appraising look before breaking out into a smile that John believed bordered on predatory. He began to wonder if he'd made a mistake in coming here, if the younger Holmes brother was some sort of madman. But he couldn't make himself leave.

Sherlock crossed the greenhouse, pushing some brambles out of his way to reach a small crate. He set the crate on the table beside the spray of flowers and motioned for John to come closer, which he did, albeit reluctantly. Sherlock stopped to tug the gloves back on again before opening the lid of the crate. Inside were small mice, all white. He reached in and picked one up, dropping it into a wide beaker that had been sitting on the edge of the table. He slid the beaker closer to John, who watched as the mouse manically moved around in its new home. Sherlock removed his gloves, leaving them on the table beside the beaker. He brushed past John and gathered up a handful of the little white Queen Anne's lace with his bare hands. John opened his mouth to ask why he touched the plants when he had warned him not to, but Sherlock cut him off. "Observe the effects of this plant which you believe to be so innocuous." He pulled off one of the clusters of white blooms and dropped it in the beaker near the mouse. John watched as the mouse sniffed at it, inching closer. After determining it was safe, the mouse tried to burrow underneath the flowers like they were bedding. But as it did, John saw its body twitch, a series of quick convulsions. Then it lay still, dead underneath the flowers.

Sherlock unceremoniously tipped the beaker over, the Queen Anne's lace and the dead mouse falling onto the table. Without a word, he pulled his gloves on and repeated the process, this time with the lilacs, and again with the foxglove. Every time, the mouse would die. When Sherlock moved to collect some of the blooms from the cut flowers on the table – oleander, Sherlock called them – John stopped him. "Okay, you've made your point." Sherlock left the flowers alone, lifting the crate from the table and replacing it in its nest of brambles. "But why?"

"Why not?" Sherlock brushed the flowers and mice off the table, no longer concerned with gloves now that the mice were dead.

"No, I mean, how are all these normal plants poisonous?"

He only smiled, offering no more information.

"How, indeed?"

... ... ...

When John was trying, and failing, to fall asleep later that night, he sat up in bed with his phone, searching through the internet for something like an answer about how Sherlock Holmes' garden was even possible. Plants didn't just _become_ poisonous, after all. It took hundreds or thousands of years of evolutionary adaptation for such changes to occur. Was it something in the soil of the estate? If so, then why only that property?

By two in the morning, John was properly frustrated.

He did searches of all the plants he had seen that he could remember. Some were actually poisonous, of course, like the golden chain tree or the foxglove, but they still shouldn't be able to produce rapid death with fleeting physical contact.

When he searched for information about the oleander shrubs, he found that they shouldn't have even been able to grow in England at all. They were native to far off places like the Arabian peninsula and Portugal. It was tropical and subtropical, certainly not meant for the cool rainy climes in England. So why had it been flourishing? How?

No matter how long he looked for an answer, still, no answer presented itself.

* * *

><p>Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of boredom, John couldn't stay away from the looming Holmes estate. Sherlock didn't seem to mind, and at times even appeared to enjoy John's company. It had been so many years since John had actually become friends with anyone that at first he was unsure what to do with having someone to talk to at the end of the day. While Sherlock professed more than once that he led his life the way he did because he found "normal" lives terribly dull, he would listen to John discuss details of his day with good humor. He always had a sharp and witty commentary to add, and for the first time, John didn't feel as if he had to pretend to fit into the place in society that he had built for himself.<p>

Still, though, no matter how many long evenings of talk and companionship they had, Sherlock never explained the strange phenomenon of the gardens, and anytime John would ask, he would act as if he hadn't heard him. He only ever referred to it as an experiment, and it was true that he seemed to treat the gardens with a scientific detachment rather than anything resembling proper care. He would often let plants go without water just to see how long they could survive, others he would drown. There were some that he cared for with devotion, but which plants received this care changed mostly without warning or reason. Some he just left to their own devices, like the ivy and the wisteria.

One night, John walked with Sherlock around the grounds of the estate. The gardens became even stranger at night, with the patches of shadowy barberry shrubs creating dark, threatening spaces throughout, contrasting sharply with the occasional hibiscus plants. Moonlight gave an eerie sort of feeling to the greenhouses, which although they were by no means abandoned or unused, certainly looked that way in the dim light.

But nighttime also allowed for some of the most impressive pieces of Sherlock Holmes' garden. The murky and unkempt ponds gave way to the deep pinks of perfectly symmetrical water lilies, the air thick and heavy with fragrant jasmine. So often the fragrances of all the different flowers would blend together during the day so that by the end of the night, John usually couldn't tell the difference between any of them. But the jasmine was always unmistakable.

So many of the night blooming flowers were white, and looked like stars that had been dropped from the sky to try and shine through the overgrown grass. Night gladiolas, lilies, and the distinct bell shape of the moonflowers. Sherlock pointed out all of these, naming those that John didn't know:

"The lilies are Casablanca lilies."

"Like the movie?"

"What movie?"

" 'As Time Goes By'? 'We'll always have Paris?' "

Sherlock only stared at him blankly.

He also frequently stated his warning to touch none of them. This was easier said than done. John would have loved having some Casablanca lilies of his own. They were just extraordinarily beautiful, although Sherlock seemed rather indifferent to them. But there was no way Sherlock would let him near the trees and bushes and flowers. Dangerous, he said.

They stopped in front of an odd looking tree at the far edge of the estate. It had an appearance similar to a large and strangely mutated aloe plant. From it hung brightly colored fruits, spiky and foreign. And all over it, large, white flowers, their centers filled with yellow stamens.

"What the hell is that?"

"A dragon fruit tree."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. Needless to say, don't attempt to eat the fruit."

"It's a weird looking thing, isn't it?"

"It is in a genus of cacti."

"How did you manage to grow a cactus here?"

"Same as the others, years of work and experimentation."

"You put a lot of effort into all these plants."

"And?"

"Well, I guess I don't understand why you don't save some of them. You know, the ones that are getting overgrown, the ones that are out of control, the ones getting strangled by all the vines. Why don't you actually keep all of them up? Like a botanical garden?"

He shrugged. "It's interesting to see how the world will play out when left mostly to its own devices. Also, some of them I just have no idea what to do with."

"Like which ones?"

"Like the daisies, for instance."

John laughed. "You can keep hibiscus flowers alive in England, but you don't know what to do with _daisies_?" Sherlock frowned, confused. "Well, you never said it was a very practical garden, did you?"

"Practicality is rather dull, don't you think?"

"Sure."

The gardens were full of the strangest things John had ever seen, but none of the plants could hold a candle to Sherlock Holmes himself. Lit by moon and starlight, he didn't seem quite real, and John almost wondered if everything, Bell Song and the Holmes estate and the flowers, was just a dream from which he had yet to wake up.

* * *

><p>One Saturday afternoon, the two of them went walking beyond the reaches of the Holmes estate. Sherlock told John explicitly where the flora ceased to be poisonous. It was one of those days that, despite being in the middle of summer, almost spoke of fall, where against all logic, you almost believed the leaves would begin to drop off the trees and the air take on that musty quality that autumn always brings.<p>

The woods around the estate were dense, but well-kept, the paths much more distinct than any of the ones that Sherlock cut through his own grounds.

Sherlock was walking ahead of John when he stumbled on a root and reached out for the nearest thing to hold on to, a small, thin tree. His bare hand wrapped around it instinctively, but he quickly and easily righted himself and let go of it to continue walking without a second thought.

When John passed the tree, he saw a circle of dying bark, a black band forming on its trunk. It began to rot before his very eyes. John stopped and stared at it, glancing at Sherlock down the path.

Without turning to look at him, he said, "Coming, John?"

John's eyes darted between Sherlock and the dying tree before he forced himself to catch up before Sherlock noticed what had happened.

By the time he fell asleep that night, he had talked himself out of it. Maybe the tree was already like that, and he just didn't see it until he was close enough. Any other explanation was just ridiculous.

That was what he kept telling himself, anyway.

* * *

><p>Sherlock had multiple greenhouses, and John had been in all of them except the smallest. When he was finally brought into it, he found himself rather surprised. This greenhouse was much less overgrown, neater, set up more like a laboratory. It was still crowded with all sorts of plants, of course, but there was a greater sense of order to it in comparison. All around its edges were daffodils of varying colors and sizes. John didn't even bother to ask how they were still in bloom so late in the year. He had come to blindly accept the fact that everything on the Holmes estate, including Sherlock, was an exception to every known rule.<p>

One section was nothing but flowers that were so dark they appeared black. Sherlock called them blacknight hollyhocks.

"A bit macabre, aren't they?"

That smile. That ever amused and challenging smile. "Why do you think I enjoy them so much?"

The rest of the available ground space was filled with dahlias. Purples, pinks, oranges, even some that were multicolored, with white tips at the end of each petal. Sherlock praised them for what he called their "geometric perfection." And it was true that they had about them a sort of honeycomb quality if one stared at them for too long.

The small greenhouse had the fewest missing panes of glass, and a ceiling that was only perhaps eight feet tall, and as a result, it seemed considerably warmer and more controlled. There were sleek metal tables on one end, and a proper cabinet that stored some of Sherlock's chemistry equipment. All over the small counter and the tables were small potted plants, some of which John recognized.

"Are those Venus flytraps?"

"Yes, they are."

"I don't know why I'm surprised. You of all people would have a collection of carnivorous plants." John shoved his hands into his pockets. Sometimes it was the only way to remind himself not to touch any of the plants. "What are the others?"

"Pitcher plants, and cape sundew plants. Also carnivorous."

"The daffodils are cheerier than I'd expect from you. Narcissus, right?"

"Correct, very good, John. They are toxic, and can cause quite a case of dermatitis, even in normal gardens. "

"Narcissus is poisonous, then."

"Much like narcissism tends to be."

"That's rich, coming from you," he said with a smile. Sherlock only laughed under his breath as he went about setting his table up, grinding leaves from some of the dahlias with a mortar and pestle. Soon they would be put under the scrutiny of one of his microscopes. He never explained what he was researching exactly, but John often wondered if the reason he never answered questions about the poisonous nature of his gardens was because he didn't know the answers himself and was hell bent on discovering them.

John looked around the little greenhouse, and amid the chaos, tucked back in a corner more for safekeeping than to hide it, was a single potted purple rose. It wasn't like the kind you could buy in stores at the last minute before a holiday. Its petals were far more open and full, more like something from a painting of a garden. It was almost perfectly symmetrical, its petals immaculate, and it gave off the lightest pleasing scent.

"Beautiful."

"What is?" Sherlock didn't even look up from his work.

"The rose. I've never seen one this color before." It was the only plant John had seen that seemed to be truly taken care of, protected, not used for experiments.

"Oh, lavender roses certainly exist," Sherlock said. He tapped the pestle on the edge of the mortar, shaking off the bits of flower that had stuck to it. "_That_ one is quite a failure, though."

"Why do you say that?"

Sherlock sighed and set his things down on the table and walked up to the rose, looking down at it in disappointment. "I've been attempting to cultivate a blue rose, which doesn't exist naturally. So I've been trying to breed one. Lavender roses are as close as you can get, so I've used a great many of them. This one is a hybrid, the result of Blue Curiosa roses and various tea roses over many years and generations." John thought the flower was perfect order in perfect chaos, simply extraordinary given the insanity that rampaged through the rest of the estate. But Sherlock looked irritated. "It's a failure because it is _still_ lavender, not blue."

"But it's amazing!"

Sherlock shook his head and bent down to lift the pot, carefully touching only the outside of it. He set it down on the table as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his gloves.

"What's it called?"

"What do you mean?" He pulled the gloves on.

"Well, it's still a new variety, right? Even if it isn't the one you were hoping for. Don't people name these things?"

"It doesn't have a name at all. Nor did any of its predecessors. When I create the blue rose, I'll name it." He bent closer to it to examine it, carefully looking over a leaf with his gloved finger.

"Why do you wear your gloves with this one?"

Sherlock paused, stiff and silent for a moment before saying, "It's incredibly delicate."

John eyed him skeptically. He had watched him manhandle all sorts of delicate plants since he'd met him.

"This one you can touch, though," he said quietly. "It won't poison you."

"You tell me all the others are poisonous, even though I know that moonflowers and lilies usually aren't."

"And you know that here, they are. This one however, perhaps due to it being created rather than simply existing, is harmless. It's rather impractical, really, having this single _normal_ flower with all these ones that can kill you."

"How did you discover that the created roses weren't dangerous?"

Sherlock drew his hand away from the rose quite suddenly, like he was afraid he had damaged it. He stared down at it, nearly oblivious to John's presence. For a while John thought he would ignore him as he usually did when faced with questions he didn't want to – or didn't know how to – answer. But he said, "As with everything else here, I discovered it through experimentation." He stalked over to the counter by the flytraps, the sound of the gloves hitting the counter top loud in the small space.

John couldn't look away from the lavender rose. He didn't understand how anyone, especially the man who created it, could look at it with so much hate.

"I was serious. That one is safe." Sherlock was leaning against the edge of the counter, watching him.

John couldn't resist reaching out to tilt the bloom toward him, the scent stronger, the epitome of spring. He smiled. Sherlock had created a single, perfect, harmless flower, despite being surrounded by nothing but poison. Even with all of the rose's deadly neighbors, it had thrived.

It was beautiful.

* * *

><p>One day they were walking out in the gardens, snapdragons and Iceland poppies dominating this section of the grounds, crowding each other out in an explosion of color. Sherlock was telling John about the more hardy plants, the ones that could survive the cold better than others.<p>

John stopped at a trellis covered in bright flowers of varying colors, pinks and purples. "What about those?"

"Those?" Sherlock stepped close to them, reached out a bare hand to inspect them as he said, "No, these are warm-weather. Bougainvillea."

"Another of your experiments?"

"Yes." He frowned at a single bloom that had had the nerve to die in the cool English weather. He reached out to inspect another section, but winced and jerked his hand back.

"What?"

Sherlock shook his head. There was a small puncture wound on his palm, bleeding. "Thorns," he said, nodding toward the flowers. When John took a closer look, he saw them. They could be easily missed, not so obvious as rose thorns. Sherlock hadn't been paying enough attention.

John reached out for Sherlock's hand. "Here, let me see." Sherlock pulled his hand back, one quick abrupt motion. He shook his head. "I'm a doctor, Sherlock."

"It's fine." Sherlock took one or two steps back away from John.

"Look, I get it that you have this neat immunity to poisonous plants, but you don't have immunity to getting stabbed by thorns."

Sherlock's face darkened considerably. "I don't have an immunity."

"_What_ are you talking about?" But even as he asked it, he felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach, a warning alarm going off in his head.

Sherlock scowled, pure frustration, and without a word set off across the property, heading for the woods they had walked in so many times before. John followed, didn't know what else to do.

They were deep in the woods when he finally said, "Sherlock, is there a point to all this?" The man was standing in the middle of the path, turning in circles, scanning the trees while he held his thumb over the puncture wound. His eyes finally settled on a patch of wildflowers, and he began to pick them like a child gathering a bouquet for a parent. When he held them out at arm's length toward John, he saw them wilt and die in his hands. Sherlock loosened his grip, letting the dead flowers fall to the ground. He turned around, glaring at the forest. He stepped off the path, laying his uninjured hand against the trunk of a large tree. When he drew away, there was a hand print left behind, the tree's wood rotting in that one place. Sherlock repeated the demonstration with other trees, sliding his hands over them and leaving marks behind like bloody hand prints at a crime scene. He tore leaves from thin branches, watched them all turn brown as they dropped to the forest floor.

When Sherlock stopped, he was breathing heavily, looking at all the evidence of his touch. He stared hard at John, almost accusing. _You wanted to know and now you do. Happy?_

A silence fell over the woods. There were the usual noises, of course, wind through the trees and occasional birdsong, but they were so much a part of the background that they didn't even register with John. Sherlock's frenzy had created a world where everything seemed like silence by comparison.

John wasn't sure what Sherlock was expecting. Shock? Horror? Disgust? But it was clear he hadn't anticipated calm. John walked up to him slowly as if he were an easily startled animal. He reached out and took hold of Sherlock's arm, layers of shirt and coat sleeves between them so their skin wouldn't touch. Sherlock let himself be led back to the house, watching John warily for the entire walk.

Once inside, John sat Sherlock down at the kitchen table, which was still dominated by chemistry equipment. He rummaged through the kitchen cabinets till he found the first aid kit, opening it and snapping on the untouched pair of gloves.

When he came up to Sherlock, reaching out for his hand, Sherlock didn't flinch and seemed mildly impressed by John's very simple idea. He watched in silence as John bandaged his hand, the latex gloves harsh against his skin, but so much better than no touch at all.

John looked down at Sherlock, still holding his hand. Sherlock was staring at the bandage over the puncture wound, his face an eerie calm like the eye of a storm, and the threat of more bad weather that John saw in his eyes made him understand. That simple gesture of first aid had probably been the only contact Sherlock Holmes had seen in decades.

... ... ...

When John returned to the estate the next day, he had thin suede gloves on his hands. Sherlock assumed that it was due to the unseasonably cold day they were having, since John was also wearing a heavier coat. But as they walked around the gardens together, John reached out for Sherlock's hand, winding their fingers together, and Sherlock understood.

All he could do was smile.

* * *

><p>"A very versatile genus, <em>Camellia<em>," Sherlock said. He stood a few feet away from John, the wind tearing at his coat. At his feet, a bed of yellow English primrose. In his bare hand, the heavy pale pink bloom of a camellia bush. "Certain varieties are used for tea, while the oils from some of the plants are used to clean blades. Lovely contrast, don't you think?" The bloom looked like it physically weighted down Sherlock's hand, even though Sherlock himself looked so captured by the wind that it seemed as if he was lighter than air itself.

John took a few steps closer, picking at a loose bit of fabric on his gloves as he came to a stop beside Sherlock.

"Not native to England, of course," he continued. "Once called the Japan Rose." He squinted at the flower, letting go of it. He turned to face John and started when he finally realized the lack of distance between them. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

John didn't answer. He only grabbed Sherlock by his scarf and kissed him.

He felt Sherlock's breath catch, felt the cold tips of his fingers on his cheek. For a few seconds, he had managed to derail Sherlock's train of thought, and he would have been lying if he didn't find doing so incredibly satisfying.

But abruptly, Sherlock jerked away, realizing what he had done. John had never seen eyes so filled with fear, and for a moment, Sherlock seemed incapable of even the slightest movement, frozen like someone who had stumbled across a vicious predator.

"Oh no." His face had paled, his shaking hands reaching instinctively for the gloves. "_No_." He repeated the word over and over, growing more and more frantic. He grabbed hold of John's arm, dragging him along, John sidestepping a choked out patch of belladonna.

"Sherlock –"

"_Why did you do that?_"

"Jesus, Sherlock! I'm fine." Another careful bit of footwork to avoid some of the Casablanca lilies.

Sherlock didn't answer, gave no response except panicked breathing. He came to a stop at the back door, flinging it open, pulling John inside before letting go of him. He began to tear through the kitchen cabinets. "Medicine."

"What?"

"_Medicine!_ Have to have _something_, something for symptomatic relief." He threw the first aid kit open, glaring at it in frustration before throwing it aside, bandage scissors clattering on the floor.

"Sherlock, I don't need anything, look at me." He took a few steps toward him. Sherlock backed up against the kitchen counter, braced for flight. "I'm okay. See?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Why are you okay? How are you okay?"

"Well, I feel fine, and I don't appear to have burst into flames."

"Delayed effects. Systemic effects."

"Just...calm down for a minute."

"You should be _dead_, John."

"Yeah, well, sorry, but I'm not."

"You almost _got yourself killed_."

"I knew I'd be all right."

"No you didn't. There was no way you could know that."

John held out one hand, palm forward. "Hey, listen to me. I'm fine."

"You're fine."

"Yeah."

Sherlock was quiet for a while, and John was nearly convinced he'd gotten through to him. But then he said, "But the potential for delayed effects –"

"Okay, sit down, Sherlock."

"I don't know what the delayed effects could be. I have no idea how they would manifest."

"Then let's sit for a minute, and I'll tell you if I start to feel unwell."

He shook his head. "You might not feel anything. This is foreign territory."

"Then you can monitor me. Besides, I'm the doctor, not you. You couldn't even manage to take out your own stitches." Sherlock bristled at the remark, and John smiled, happy to have distracted him for a moment.

"Sit." Sherlock waved his hand over the table, refusing to take a single step away from the counter until John was seated. Even then, he stayed in place for a while, arms crossed over his chest, only sitting down himself reluctantly and after many false starts. Sherlock watched him carefully, as if expecting him to fall apart. John tried not to startle him.

There was a vase on the table, filled with stargazer lilies. Mrs. Hudson had put them there, clearly from a store-bought bouquet and not the grounds. Decorations, not experiments, gorgeous with their heavy scent. The stargazer lilies in the gardens had succumbed to weeds a few weeks earlier.

Sherlock pulled his gloves off, dropping them on the table. He sighed as he rubbed his hands over his face.

"Why did you do that?" He looked up at John, practically boiling over with self-loathing. "John, why? I believed you were more intelligent than that. Risky. Stupid."

"It wouldn't have been my first risky, stupid decision," John said, pulling off his own gloves and shoving them in his pockets.

Sherlock stared back at the tabletop. "What am I going to do if there are delayed effects?" He spoke more to himself than to John.

"I don't think there will be."

"You can't know that."

John didn't say what he wanted to – _yes, I can_ – so he waited in silence for Sherlock to speak. When he didn't, John prompted him.

"When did it start?"

"When did what start?"

"The poison. There's not really a sense in talking around it, is there? You're well aware that I know."

Sherlock lifted his eyes from the wood grain, but refused to make eye contact. "I don't know when exactly. My parents were rarely home, so it isn't as if there was a great deal of physical contact. It could have technically started before I was aware of it. But one day, I reached for Mycroft, and burns erupted on his skin. The woman our parents had watching us at the time was scared to death. She quit after that, understandably. Mycroft scarred rather badly, finger marks. Perhaps you've seen them?" John nodded. "I suppose we both believed it was a fluke, since that seemed statistically more likely. But nearly a month later, we wanted to see if that was the case. Mycroft wanted to know more than I did. He had me touch him, one fingertip on his forearm. It scarred too, looked something like a cigarette burn. By all logic, your face should be mangled right now."

"How old were you?"

"Oh, six or seven."

"Jesus, Sherlock."

"Is it terrible to say that you rather get used to it over the years?"

"You shouldn't have to be used to it."

Sherlock made a flippant little hand gesture. "People grow accustomed to far worse." John wasn't sure he believed him.

"So you just isolated yourself? After the thing with Mycroft?"

"No. In fact, Mycroft made an active effort to make my life as normal as he could. He found ways to talk our parents into letting him watch me instead of hiring help, for instance. He made excuses about immune systems when we had to go to parties or public functions. We were taught at home, so school wasn't an issue. For a while, I was convinced things would be all right."

"But you ended up...I'm assuming that something didn't go all right."

Sherlock scoffed. "It's stupid. Childish." He paused. "Do you know what they say about animals? How they know when humans are hurting?"

"I've heard things like that before, yeah."

"I think there's truth to it, even though there's no real way to study such a thing objectively."

"What are you talking about?"

"There was a dog we had here. Redbeard. Our parents had originally gotten him for themselves, but the dog took to me and Mycroft more. So they left him at home when they traveled, instead of taking him with them." Another pause, and the slightest wince. "I was sitting in one of the back hallways one day. Mycroft was out, and the remaining staff was busy with their respective jobs. I still hate how lonely children feel. The dog found me. I hugged him without thinking." Sherlock rested his head on his open palm, reaching out his free hand. He trailed a finger along one of the lily's petals, and at his touch, it turned brown and fell to the table. "The cook found me a few hours later, crying, trying to make the dog wake up." He frowned at the dead petal, insulted by it. "I wouldn't let her come near me. I ran. Mycroft finally tracked me down in the woods later that night." For the first time, Sherlock looked at him. "You see the problem."

"You're going to have to be more specific."

"I can't let something like that happen to you. I can't put you at risk."

"But you didn't kill me, Sherlock."

"People who are allergic to certain drugs can develop more serious, life-threatening allergies with repeated exposure."

"You're not a drug. Not literally, anyway. Besides, it's a risk I'm willing to take."

"You shouldn't."

"You won't win this argument." Sherlock sat back in his seat, almost annoyed at such a proclamation.

The hours stretched on, mostly passed in silence, periodically punctuated by more protests from Sherlock, and more stubbornness from John. Before they realized, it had gotten very late, all traces of light outside the windows turned to black.

Sherlock refused to let John leave, despite his comment about needing to get home. Finally, John gave up, accepting Sherlock's offer of one of the guest bedrooms. "Just in case," Sherlock said. "Just in case there are delayed effects."

John thought he would be awake for hours, staring into the darkness of the room, but sleep came so easily that he didn't even feel its approach until it was upon him.

... ... ...

Three in the morning, and Sherlock was walking around one of his greenhouses after making rounds to check on John. He continued to be baffled at the lack of illness or injury, but was all the same grateful for it.

The greenhouse was quiet this late, though in truth it was quiet during daylight hours too. But somehow the night made the silence feel imposed. Every small noise was magnified, even the lightest footfall scraping in discord over the ground. Sherlock usually avoided the greenhouses at such hours. They unnerved him. But tonight the house proved more nagging and terrible than the greenhouses ever could.

Sherlock ran his bare hands over the plants, sighing and feeling incredibly weighted down. So many things that shouldn't be poisonous, but were. Just like him. He wanted to hate the plants for their poison, even though he created them, but every time he tried to muster that rage, the desire to smash every pot in the greenhouse, he was reminded of the fact that they were the only things like him in the world. And he couldn't destroy exceptions to the rule.

Except the lavender rose, perhaps.

He glared at it, sitting quietly in its pot out of the way of its poisonous neighbors. The great experimental failure. He had never hated something so much as he did that innocent flower. The creation of a blue rose had preoccupied him for so long, and all it had gotten him was a shade of lavender and a single plant that couldn't stand up to his poison. Generation after generation of the purple roses, dead on contact, a final insult to the folly of his experiments.

Though he had to admit, it was beautiful in its aesthetic. But all it did was cause him pain.

He stood over it for a while, hands in his pockets, staring at the bloom, at the way the harsh and bare greenhouse light cut at the soft shade of purple. It was a shame, really.

After a moment, he reached out to touch it, to close the book on his failed experiment. There really was no sense in keeping it alive, no sense in continuing what had proven to be an impossible feat of botany.

He cupped the bloom in his hand, thinking that it was almost time to check on John again.

The rose retained its color, its vitality.

Sherlock frowned at it, running his fingers along the individual petals, barely resisting shouting at it. _Die! Just die!_

A sharp intake of breath as he pulled his hand away. He picked up the rose by the edge of its pot, sitting it down on the nearest table, trying to look at it closer. He touched it over and over, always expecting a certain result. But science should never anticipate the same results. If it did, there wouldn't be vaccines.

Sherlock dragged a microscope across the tabletop, reaching blindly for mortar and pestle, for slides. He spent far too long examining the petals of the flower under the microscope, comparing the slides to others from previous generations, trying to find the difference, the thing that had allowed this single rose immunity to all his poison. Even the regular garden roses he had created that crawled across the grounds killed the bugs that landed on them.

But not this one.

... ... ...

The following morning, John woke up feeling just as he had the day before, rather pleased since there was now no way Sherlock could go on about delayed effects.

He ran into Sherlock in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, Sherlock evidently on his way to check in himself. He looked miserable, still in yesterday's clothes, with dark circles under his eyes.

"Don't tell me you were awake all night."

"Obviously."

"You should have just woken me up if you were going to sit up worrying anyway."

"I was running some tests."

"Tests?"

Sherlock didn't answer, gave no explanation. Instead he reached out and trailed a singer along John's jaw. This time there was no concern in his face, only a reverent sort of calm. John didn't flinch, just waited for Sherlock to come back to earth.

"I'm clearly not the one with an immunity to poison," he finally said. "_You_. Why you?"

"I don't know," John said as Sherlock's hand fell back to his side.

"You're the only one in the world."

John was silent for a while, taken off guard by the simple statement. "Yeah, well, so are you."

Sherlock gave a small nod, the pensive veil lifting from his face, a smile creeping into his expression for the first time that day, like a sunrise.

"Come with me. I want to show you something."

... ... ...

Sherlock dragged him over to the table with a recklessness of touch that he would have decried only a day before. The purple rose sat in its pot, looking just as beautiful as it did every day, although it appeared to be missing a few petals.

Without warning, Sherlock reached out to touch the bloom, and John couldn't stop him in time, his hand finding Sherlock's wrist too late. A sinking feeling came over him as he waited for the horrible inevitability, the death of the crown jewel in Sherlock Holmes' garden. But it lived, and when John saw the look of triumph and delight on Sherlock's face, he understood what Sherlock had been doing all night while he slept.

"I wanted to kill it, you know." John looked up from the bloom, still clutched protectively in Sherlock's fingers. "But it won't die."

"I told you it was amazing, even if you didn't think so."

"Perhaps I should have listened to you."

"Don't worry, I doubt you'll make a habit of it." Sherlock laughed, letting go of the rose. "You look happy."

"You say that as if it's unexpected." Before John could speak, he added, "Though I suppose in all fairness, it probably is. But then again, so is immunity to poison."

That was the truth in it, really. In a poisonous world, it wasn't a matter of finding someone who wasn't poisonous. It was a matter of finding someone who was merely immune to your particular brand of poison.

... ... ...

Later that day, when the sun was falling in the sky, the two of them exhausted but elated, Sherlock said, "You asked me, when you first saw it, what the name of the lavender rose was, since it was a new variety."

Sherlock hadn't mentioned the rose since they'd left the greenhouse that morning, although the effect of the unexpected botanical success had certainly colored the rest of their day just as the gardens colored the landscape. "Yeah? What did you finally decide to do about that?" He felt Sherlock's fingers on his arm. The touch was so familiar that he didn't understand how it hadn't always been this way. Sherlock had been high on human contact all day, and John couldn't blame him. And honestly, John was just as high on it as Sherlock was.

"I had to consider its properties, its color, shape, had to think seriously about including something about the immunity in the name, but of course that would be hard to explain to anyone else. Even thought about being simplistic, naming it after its place of origin, or something along those lines. In the end I decided to name it something else entirely, having really nothing to do with the bloom itself." He fell silent, and John was about to ask again, to try and draw words out of him, when he said, "_Rosa militus_."

"That sounds nice. What does it mean?"

Sherlock smiled, threading their fingers together.

"_The soldier rose_."


End file.
